When Data Rules, Students Are Left Behind

We all know the arguments against using standardized tests.  We are aware that offering incentives based on sales figures or other hard data cause the best of people to blur the lines in order to improve their results.

In the United States there is a big to do currently around using student performance to decide the value of a teacher.  While I do not agree that a teacher who has more experience in the classroom is necessarily a better educator, I cannot believe that we actually feel, if a one's job is on the line, that educators would not do whatever they can to make the data look favorable. 

In #edchat lately there was a discussion on alternatives to grading in the classroom.  A number of interesting posts came to the fore, but for those of us in K-8 education, the options are limited.  Report cards will be coming out soon, and not having grades is not an option.

In our classrooms we talk about differentiation using technology and other resources.  We talk about assessment for learning, instead of assessment of learning.  Our case management meetings, staff meetings, network meetings, family of school meetings - they all focus on helping our students achieve using whatever means are at our disposal.  How can be help each student learn in his or her own way?

My school district is enlightened.  We tackle issues in a genuine and in-depth way.  Yet we still rely on standardized tests to provide data.  Standardized tests for non-standard students.

I have long since come to terms with this oddity.  But what has floored me in recent days is our melding of the standardized testing of reading with the concept that every student learns differently.

We use the Developmental Reading Assessment.  As a student teacher I was placed in a pilot school when the test first came to our district.  Since that time I have been pioneering the test in schools from one side of the region to the other.  It is based on psychometric principles and does a good job of letting one know both how well a student can read, and how well he or she can comprehend what has been read.

Is it perfect? Heck no.  Does it work? Yes.

What is killing me right now are our new rules regarding students with identified special education needs.  The reading passage can be read to the students by a computer.  Yes.  This supposed test of reading ability can be transmitted orally to the student.  What is more, students are allowed to read passages many years below their grade level and have those results melded with their actual grade level text to demonstrate that they read "at level".

When we submit our data to the Board, it can include numerous instances where students marks have no representation of their actual ability to read.  Huh?!

We are so caught up in a data-driven culture that we are beginning to collect data that makes no sense.  It is time for the pendulum to swing back.